Insanity
by TheVideoGamer
Summary: Mephiles the Dark has returned, but he doesn't intend to fight anybody. Instead, he'll simply make our favorite heroes lose their abilities to fight completely. Yes, he'll simply make them useless through the power of insanity. I found the first three chapters on my hard drive from a long time ago, and now I shall continue it! WARNING: Major character death and gore.
1. I

_A/N: Just to let you readers know, this was a dare by TheWritingGamer. That is all._

Chapter One: How It All Started

Mephiles was back, and he was stronger than ever. Doctor Eggman, in a last resort to rule the whole of Mobius, constructed a time machine and went back to the point in time when Sonic and Elise were about to put out the flame of disaster, Solaris. He managed to push them aside and escape with the flame. Now, since Mephiles is the conscience and mind of this god, he was back as well.

"We're not going to kill Sonic." Dr. Eggman explained to Mephiles, "That didn't work for you last time, remember? So instead we're just going to make him not able to fight anymore."

Mephiles looked around the hidden base in which they both stood. Dr. Eggman was back to using his old pyramid base from 2001. "How do you propose we do that, Robotnik?" Mephiles asked, cocking his head to the side.

"Well, I've collected all the Chaos Emeralds except for that last green one, which Shadow has, so we're going to find Sonic and his fellow rodents and snatch it from him. In the same breath, I propose that we turn around and torture them with our prize."

"Go on."

"So, we use the power of those emeralds to make them all relive their worst memory, over and over!" The two of them exchanged a nod and a crooked smile. It was a perfect plan.

Somewhere in the woods near Soleanna...

Sonic, Tails and Knuckles were goofing off and laughing as they sat on a large rock in the middle of a clearing. Amy and Cream were singing upbeat songs as they picked flowers from patches of white, purple, and pink. The Chaotix detectives were all huddled over a computer in Espio's lap as he leaned against another rock. Silver levitated above the patch of flowers, enjoying the scene. Shadow was on the borderline of the hollow, leaning against a faraway tree, fast asleep. Finally, the black hedgehog woke up and looked into the cloudless sky through the branches of his tree.

"Something's bound to go wrong on a day like this."

Sure enough, he suddenly looked down to see Amy and Cream screaming at something. Everyone stood to their feet as Dr. Eggman's eggmobile floated down from the sky. "Well, well, well. The gang's all here!" He laughed malevolently and then called, "Oh Mephiles?"

Sonic covered his eyes as a flash of purple light swept over the meadow. When it had dissipated enough for the Mobians to look around again, the crystalline spawn of Solaris was waiting for them. His low voice began, "Hello Sonic, Shadow, Silver."

Silver ran to Sonic's side and Shadow dashed for Mephiles. "Don't you DARE bother us!" He screamed, about to unclip his inhibitor rings. A ray of dark energy shot out of the demon's hand and Shadow just barely dodged it, stopping in his tracks.

"Let's not be so hasty, rodents!" Dr. Eggman called down, "I know you're shocked, but that's not the way to treat a fellow that you haven't seen in so long!"

"You... resurrected Mephiles... So that's why you stole Solaris from Elise and me!" Sonic shouted, "We were so close, and you just pushed us aside and ran away with the flame!"

"Indeed," The doctor replied, and this is why!"

"You're never gonna win, though!" Sonic promised, "Because the bad guys always lose!"

"Well, that may be true, but it won't matter, because I don't intend to fight you, and neither does Mephiles!"

"What are you saying?" Silver asked, anger and suspicion rising in his voice.

"I mean, this! Now, Mephiles!" Suddenly, the villain threw Mephiles six Chaos Emeralds, and the animals all gasped and looked at Shadow, who looked over to the tree he was sitting at. The glowing jewel rested in the grass beneath it. He turned to get it, but Silver grabbed his arm and shook his head.

"No!" He whispered, "They haven't noticed it's there yet!" Shadow nodded in understanding.

"With these Chaos Emeralds, we plan to-" Dr. Eggman continued his speech and the two evil doers looked at each other. Silver hit Shadow in the shoulder, motioning that this was his window of time.

Shadow kicked on his shoes and made a mad dash for the emerald. The doctor saw what he was doing and yelled, "Hey!"

The demon shot a beam from his hand and Shadow easily dodged, but tripped on a rock in the aftermath. With the Chaos Emeralds, Mephiles teleported over to the last one and picked it up. They began to spin around him steadily.

Sonic laughed. "He can't go super! What're you thinking?"

"How many times do I have to explain this to you, Hedgehog?" Mephiles asked, "I'm not going to fight you!"

In another flash of light, everyone was momentarily blinded. But when _this_ light cleared, everyone was screaming and shaking in fear. Shadow kept yelling, "Maria, no!"

Silver kept yelling, "Blaze! Please, don't go! You're my only friend!"

Sonic yelled, "AHH! The bridge is breaking! That whale's trying to kill me! I'm gonna drown!"

The rest were similar, but ultimately, everyone was reliving some kind of traumatizing event. Well, most anyway. Amy was crying about Sonic getting almost killed by an orca while Charmy freaked out about a fridge running out of ice cream.

But basically, it wasn't funny at all.


	2. N

_A/N: Sorry this chapter is so much shorter than the first. That was done completely unintentionally, and I'm not going to try to lengthen it because I'm attempting to preserve this work and keep it the way it was (well, pretty much was) a year ago. But after chapter three, I'll be writing them brand-new (is that even correct grammar?).  
_

* * *

Chapter Two: The Destruction Begins

Silver missed fire. So guess what? He lit Everything. On. Fire. And that's pretty easy to do when you have telekinesis.

As whole buildings burned, animal control was dragging Sonic out of a museum with a picture of an orca on display. He had had a meltdown. Meanwhile, Tails was holding a gun to his head screaming, "I miss you Cosmo!" While Charmy robbed ice cream stores.

Amy was fighting the animal control with her mallet and Cream and Cheese were calling out for Chocola. Shadow watched atop a skyscraper at the madness. He laughed, because the terror amused him so, but his face froze in horror when a little blonde girl began to scream from the window of a burning building. "NO!" He yelled, seeing Maria calling him from the window, "No! Maria!" He jumped from his building and dashed at the speed of sound over to hers. In seconds, he had run up the outside of the wall and was almost to her, when suddenly he heard a loud crack. The floor above her collapsed and the window feel down on top her, snapping her neck instantly. Shadow jumped into the open air and grabbed hold of a windowsill on a parallel skyscraper. He watched in horror as thousands of people fell to their deaths with the building. To him, he had witnessed Maria's death again.

With a scream of defeat, Shadow flung himself back into the air, not intending to land safely this time. He fell for a good thirty seconds before he finally hit the ground with a piercing crack, but to his surprise, he jumped right back to his feet. "Oh yeah, I'm immortal." He groaned, "My bones aren't going to break that easily. What made that sound, though?"

When he looked down, a twinge of guilt crept across his anatomy. It was Amy. Her limbs were bent in all the wrong directions, and her face was embedded in the pavement. "...Amy?" He asked, grabbing her by the spikes and lifting up her head. Her face was smashed in and covered in blood. He was suddenly taken aback when he saw Maria lying on the ground. He gasped and dropped her head. "Oh God!" People began to gather on the street, and animal control rushed in. They had Sonic's neck in one of those harness-on-a-stick things, and Shadow stepped back until he hit a human.

He watched helplessly as a look of pure despair crept onto Sonic's face. Shadow had killed Amy by accident. "Oh my God." He repeated, seeing so many images of Maria flashing in his mind. Sonic's body went limp, and every human cried out in fear as their savior passed out.

Shadow just ran for his life, until he bumped into Silver.


	3. S

Chapter Three: The Flames

"Blaze..." Silver moaned. He was walking slowly through an alleyway in Station Square, setting everything he passed on fire with a lighter. He ignored the screams of people. They were inaudible to him. Suddenly, his little ivory ears picked up the sound of a deep, masculine voice breathing heavily. He turned around and saw the slightest glimpse of black rushing toward him. In half a second his hand was in the air and Shadow froze, inches away from him.

"...What?" Silver asked, releasing him, "You almost ran into me. What's your problem?"

"I...I...Just...Killed...Maria!" Shadow panted, his eyes crazed and bloodshot (as bloodshot as red eyes get, anyway).

Silver stared at him, then reached out his hand to touch Shadow. The artificial hedgehog slapped Silver's hand away. "What're you doing?" He asked irritably.

"I like your color." Silver's eyes were hardly focusing on anything anymore. He looked insane, and something was _clearly_ not right. He lowered his voice to a whisper in the following breath, "It looks like... _fire_."

Shadow ducked just as Silver meant to swallow him in the power of telekinesis. He kicked Silver's legs out from under him and ran into the crowded street, followed by whispers of, "_It's him! He killed Sonic the Hedgehog and his girlfriend!_"

"What?" Shadow asked, cocking his head to the side, "I didn't kill him! I didn't kill Amy either! I killed... Maria."

"You liar!" A little girl yelled, "You crushed Amy Rose, and Sonic's heart stopped when he saw her! He died five minutes ago in the animal shelter!" It didn't help that this little girl had big blue eyes. Shadow ran up to her with a shockingly apologetic look on his face.

"Maria! I'm so sorry! They were both accidents! I swear! I swear!"

"Not true!" The little girl countered, "And my name's not Maria, It's Angela!"

"No Maria, don't lie to me! And I swear, it was an accident!"

He grabbed her face in his hands, and a woman standing nearby yelled, get your blood-stained paws off my daughter!"

"I swear! I swear!" Shadow continued, shaking the girl crazily. He must not have known his own strength, because the girl's neck snapped under his force. The humans screamed and screamed. Shadow did too, seeing Maria die for the fourth time.

He turned to run away again, but to his dismay, Silver was suddenly right behind him and he was grabbed by telekinesis. The humans were too preoccupied with the dead child to notice that Silver was walking up to Shadow with a lighter in his hand. "So nice. So fiery. I love your fur." He repeated it over and over until the words had no meaning left. Meanwhile, Shadow struggled to get free, to no avail of course, while the crazed Silver hobbled closer and closer. Finally, he stopped walking when the two hedgehogs' faces were only inches apart. Then he lit his lighter with a _click!_

"Don't you dare touch me!" Shadow screamed, muffled, in fault of his captor.

Suddenly, Silver's wide eyes focused on Shadow. "Have you been having... flashbacks too?"

"Yes. You know that Mephiles has been messing with our minds. It's part of his plan. Try to snap out of it. The Silver I know would never hurt his friends." For a split second Silver's face returned to normal, and he looked horrified.

"Shadow... forgive me. I can't resist... I..." Then his face snapped to a wide-eyed, crazy expression again. He chuckled in an oddly high-pitched tone that only proved his insanity further. He held the lighter an inch away from Shadow's face and lit it. Shadow could feel the intense heat against his skin. "We have something in common, you know." He whispered, "We both like to ruin things." He thrust the lighter into Shadow's face and he yelled out in agony as the flame hit his cheek, burning his left eyelid as well. He could smell the burning flesh as Silver chuckled again and knew he would be blind in that eye for the rest of his life.

He could hear a sound fading in from the distance as Silver chuckled. He began to realize that it was a car. Silver laughed on and on, not noticing. Shadow tried to look past the fire with his right eye, wondering if the driver was aware of what was going on. This particular human appeared to be staring wide-eyed at the crowd beside them and was going straight toward the two hedgehogs, unaware of their presence. The driver was very close to the two when he saw them, and slammed on the brakes. The screeching tires brought Silver to his senses and he levitated out of the way. Shadow was released and fell to the ground with the car terrifyingly close to killing him. He began to crawl out of the way but just barely preserved his own life as the car summoned sparks and glided past him.

He breathed heavily, then began to laugh, realizing he was okay. Although he could see blood dripping to the ground below his face, he felt elated, but when the time came to get on his feet he fell back down again. "Looking good!" Silver joked as he walked back up to Shadow from behind, "I was hoping I could kill you myself, so this is great news!" That's when Shadow decided to look back at his foot and saw that it was distorted and twisted oddly. "That car just about _crushed_ your foot, didn't it?"

"Yeah," Shadow's mouth turned up into a crooked smile. For some reason, he couldn't feel the pain. It was actually kind of intriguing to him. He felt satisfied with himself. The two laughed together for a moment. That is, until the humans began to look in their direction. People began to scream. "Oh great, more screaming..." Shadow moaned as they became the center of attention. An ambulance pulled up, but it wasn't for Shadow. It was for the little girl. Animal control began to pervade the streets for Shadow.

The black hedgehog strained his neck to see the locks of blonde hair hanging from the stretcher, and when the image hit his vision, he began to scream out in pain. His face, his foot, it was all so unbearable. Silver looked at him like he was a monster, but then began to look at him sympathetically. The unwounded hedgehog began to shake his head as he slowly backed away, but was caught by four animal control workers. All of whom were telekinetically smashed into neighboring buildings. He began to levitate away, but was only about three feet into the air when he was shot with a tranquilizer dart and was brought to the ground unconscious.

Shadow continued scream, his eye still bleeding and the other's vision beginning to blur from the blood loss and the pain. More ambulances began to pull up and the four animal control workers were brought to the hospital. It seemed that everyone had forgotten about Shadow, until a worker finally said, "What do we do about that one? Isn't he the-"

The other responded quickly, "He's as good as dead! Leave him!" The asker nodded and they walked away, the one giving orders mumbling, "And good riddance too..." From what Shadow could tell, he was dressed differently than the others. In a dark blue... suit? No, something else. He had medals and badges all over his uniform, and a low, somewhat angry voice. A voice that Shadow recognized.

Then it hit him. It was GUN Commander Abraham Tower.


End file.
